While it's still fresh in my mind, the details of my trip to New York, as told from the departure lounge of Terminal 4 at JFK.  First of all, I'm very happy that I made the trip.  It was just as great to see my coworkers as I thought it would be.  I'd be working with these folks for 9 months now and it was just very nice to put faces to names and Skype pictures.  And for those I'd worked with before, it was weirdly like no time had passed at all, even though it's been 10 years.  The longer I live the more I value consistency; consistent friends, professional contacts.  Speaking of which, I got to see Bob, which was great.  We keep bumping into each other in random places.  New York has basically not changed at all.  We went down to Burp Castle on St. Mark's Place and it's like I was just there yesterday.  A few things are different; the beer list is smaller.  But the tables are still the same, wedged in to a tiny spot between a shaky fence and the sidewalk, and they still shush you if you talk too loudly.  New York is a weird study in contrasts; the bright green of new tree growth, colored by spring, surrounded by huge tall brick buildings and a small army of people trying desperately to assert their indidivuality while staring at their phones.  For a couple of days, I was happy to become one of them; walking quickly, taking chances at crosswalks, always on a mission, always with a goal in mind.  New York is the perfect city to travel to and travel from, and so many people are, a city of constant transients.  Other people smarter than I am have remarked on how the real story of the 21st century is the division of the world into two parts: the urban and the rural.  We live now in a world where a person in New York City has more in common with someone from Moscow than they do with someone from rural Oklahoma.  And nowhere is that collection of interconnected global centers more obvious than in Manhattan, where you hear languages other than English more frequently than English itself, and where everyone looks like they just came from somewhere else, and might be headed back there soon.  And of course I'm no different.  

One thing that was oddly coincidental was that my company's office turned out to be just a few blocks from where I used to live in Manhattan.  That's not a total shock; many of my coworkers shared that old Manhattan company with me, with offices nearby, and we had chosen to live someplace near my work.  But still it was weird to walk around my old haunts.  I remembered a few things; a bodega we happened to wander into that I suddenly realized I'd been in 10 years ago.  Madison Square Park.  Oddly, though, I couldn't remember where I'd lived, nor could I really find it.  I think I might have found it, but I wasn't sure.  Which is weird considering I lived there!  It made me realize what an odd time that was in my life; everything was a total emotional blur, and I was embedded in my own worries about my divorce, my past and my future.  Of all the time in my life that was the "least Buddhist" part, where I was stuck in delusions about my relationships, my career, my existence.  And so it's interesting how little I can clearly remember.  The feelings and emotions, yes, but not the places or faces.  And if remembering is something you want - and I do - then it's yet another lesson that I'm on a better life path now.  Whatever the shortcomings of my life, I remember things, I live fully - at least I usually do.  I hope it's not another 10 years before I'm back.  Now that the block is cleared and I have a reason to go, I hope to go back.  I loved hanging out with my coworkers.  We played Dungeons & Dragons and ate pizza and drank beer and shared stories about Trump and got some work done, too, and it was generally just as magnificent as I thought it might be.  On the other hand, I had no nostalgia for the city itself.  I don't want to live there, which is nice to know and be sure about.  I'm clear that isn't what I want.  In fact, I'm starting to build a lot of clarity around what I do want.  Which is great.

I'll remember the delicious bagel I ate, the beautiful drive out the Belt Parkway to JFK, my boss' immaculately appointed Park Slope walk-up, the smell of Rafiqi's street meat wafting away from the cart, and playing Double Dragon with Bob at the new Barcade, not to mention the aforementioned D&D, and the tiny WeWork office and the fact that everyone (everyone!) wears black and the gum on the stairs in the Subway.  Ahh, New York.